These days delays are rampant, the planes are jam-packed and you’re lucky to get a complimentary pouch of dry-roasted peanuts. Veteran travelers yearn for the era when stainless steel flatware, ceramic dinnerware and glass salt and pepper shakers were employed to serve multi-course meals ordered from a menu.

We can all relive that glorious time at the semiannual San Francisco Airline Memorabilia Show and Sale. Here you’ve got the opportunity to ogle vintage advertisements, playing cards, photos, books and magazines, schedules, pins and buttons, posters and postcards. You’ll take a trip down Memory Lane just to see the names of airlines like TWA, Pan Am, Eastern and numerous others long since out of business.

The event happens 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. next Saturday at the Best Western Grosvenor Hotel, 380 S. Airport Blvd., South San Francisco. Adult admission is $5, children younger than 12 are admitted free. For more information, call (408) 504-8345, or check out www.sfoairlineshow.com.

NEW MAGAZINE: Let’s face it. We antique collectors can never get enough news. That’s why I’m excited to let you know about Today’s Vintage.

The monthly magazine – it had its debut in August – is loaded with state and national goings-on, decorating advice and feature stories, plus auction and calendar listings.

You’ll find free sample copies at antiques shows and flea markets, as well as at local antiques shops. I picked up Today’s Vintage at the Antiques Colony, 1881 W. San Carlos St. on Antiques Row in San Jose. For home delivery, call (800) 914-8434. A one-year subscription runs $24.

REMEMBERING A GIANT IN THE WORLD OF ANTIQUES: Wayne Pratt, once an appraiser on television’s “Antiques Roadshow,” died July 26 following complications from heart valve surgery. He was 64.

Pratt, a legend in the world of antiques, specialized in American decorative arts. He was a fixture at major antiques shows and ran breathtaking full-page ads in the Magazine Antiques beginning in 1983.

Born with an eagle’s eye for high-end goods, Pratt purchased his first 18th century Windsor chair when he was only 7 years old. The New England native eventually owned retail shops on Nantucket Island, Mass., and in Woodbury, Conn.

Pratt was a fixture on the hit PBS series “Antiques Roadshow” for at least half a dozen seasons. Several years ago, he was caught up in a lawsuit over an original version of the Bill of Rights he had purchased for $200,000.

It turned out that the document – a draft George Washington dispatched in 1789 to encourage North Carolina to ratify the U.S. Constitution – had been missing since the end of the Civil War. A battle with the FBI ended when Pratt relinquished his claim and donated the document to the state of North Carolina.

Contact Steven Wayne Yvaska at steve.yvaska@sbcglobal.net. or in care of the San Jose Mercury News, House and Home Section, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190. Read Yvaska’s columns at www.mercurynews.com/.
steveyvaska.

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